Wedding Undergraduates

Apr 2012

This week, as we explore the idea of "Change of Plans," I wanted to talk about how we can choose to change the tone of our engagement when things get hard (and for most of us, there is at least one moment when things will get hard). So today, Emily is here, talking about one of the more lovely ideas I've heard of: the Engagement Advent Calendar. I grew up religious and Protestant, so this line hit me hard, "Like Advent, an engagement is a time for hope and preparation." Within the religious calendar, Advent isn't just a time to get ready to open presents. It's time to emotionally prepare yourself for hope (and preparing for hope is one of my hardest spiritual practices, if we're being honest). I love the idea of applying that to the last months, or weeks, of engagement. It's not just about getting ready for the party, it's about emotional preparation and hope for what is to come: a life together.

I always loved Advent calendars at Christmas when I was young.

For as far back as I could remember my mom always bought me one from church each November. They were small, flat, cardboard boxes and each day in the month of December I would peel back the little perforated doors to find chocolate inside. CHOCOLATE! Waiting for Christmas was exciting enough, but then in those last few days I got rewarded for my patience with tiny cocoa confections. Then, at the end of all this chocolate came presents. Could it get much better?

I’ve been engaged now for over two years. It has been kind of like waiting for Christmas as a child—it seems like that wonderful day will never come.

We moved our lives from Michigan to New York City five months after our engagement so that my fiancé Andrew could pursue a master’s degree, which he will receive just a few short weeks before the wedding. Most of our first year of engagement was spent getting our lives in order in a completely foreign atmosphere. We had most of the “big” things (the dress, the reception venue, the church, catering, and photographer) figured out by the one-year mark. With all this time on my hands, I became lazy, and put off making any more decisions. I dreamed a lot, and wasted entire weekends staring at wedding blogs, but I didn’t actually accomplish anything.

Then, exactly six months from the wedding date, I had my “oh sh*t, I actually have to plan this” moment and went insane.

Ok, it didn’t happen quite that swiftly or thoroughly, but I did spend a lot of time in front of the computer, furiously scrolling through internet searches for the perfect this or that. There was this one night my vision went completely blurry after a five-hour Etsy bender, and I had to lie down to regain my sight.

I now had to try to cram wedding planning into my already jam-packed life with a full-time job, acting gigs on the side, two cats to take care of, and a fiancé whose equally stressful, full schedule allowed him little time to help. I also ran into some difficulty with my mom, who manifested her struggle of giving up her little girl into harsh criticism about my wedding choices. I was simultaneously commanded by my family to be as budget-conscious as possible while not leaving out any of the “traditional” wedding indulgences (even the ones we don’t care a lick about). I found myself completely emotionally wrecked every single day for several months. The overwhelming stress put quite a strain on my relationship with Andrew.

Early in the year, during a moment of particular sanity, I realized the serious importance of the last few months of our engagement. Like Advent, an engagement is a time for hope and preparation. And I don’t mean preparations like shopping and decorating. It’s the time to emotionally prepare yourself to commit fully to your partner. It is a step that is too often overlooked by brides pulling out their hair over insignificant choices.

I decided to make a Wedding Advent Calendar. Continue reading The Advent Calendar

Posted in: Engagements & Proposals, Planning, Wedding Undergraduates | 45 Comments »

Apr 2012

Elisabeth: Going The (Intercultural, International, Wedding Planning) Distance

Today I'm thrilled to give you a post from intern Elisabeth, who's writing for us once a month about her wedding planning process. Elisabeth converted to Islam just about a year ago, and she is currently in Saudi Arabia, with her fiancé in London, planning a wedding in Dubai. (And you thought your wedding planning was complicated!) But everyone on staff laughed till they cried over this post, because RIGHT? YES. We've all totally been there. I mean, just look at these annoyed Skype faces. I rest my case.

When Amin and I got engaged last November, I didn’t give a second thought to how long distance would affect our wedding planning. After all, we were world champion long distancers. If we could handle ten years in different places, surely wedding planning over a distance would be a walk in the park, right?

Wrong.

Let me be the first tell you: long-distance intercultural wedding planning is a special, special flower. A puce-colored flower, covered in thorns and smelling of poop. One that steals all your money, runs to the shops and buys a diamond-encrusted baseball bat with which to beat you over the head.

Thinking back, the situation with my engagement ring really should have tipped me off.

Early on, I told Amin that I had actually been given my grandmother’s engagement ring when she passed away. This is something of a tradition in my family—my mother wears her grandmother’s wedding ring, and plans to pass it along to her eldest granddaughter when the time comes. So we identified the ring, and that should have made things simpler.

Enter long distance. The ring was in the US, in my parents’ house, and Amin and I were in London. A year ago, Christmas-time, he called my sisters and tried to enlist them in getting the ring without letting me know. They didn’t know where it was. My mother didn’t know where it was. Time passes. Eventually he has to ask me for help, so I called my mother and walked her through the house to find it. Then we knew where the ring was, but it was nowhere near to me, or to Amin.

Lo, the many months passed, and eventually the stars aligned, and I finally got my hands on the ring. I brought it back to London, and handed it to Amin. Family visits ensued, and the ring burned a hole in his mattress during months when we enjoyed almost no time alone together. Finally, last November, three days before I was flying out of the country, the time was (finally) right. He put that lovely ring on my finger, but then took it right back off… the alterations still needed to be completed. My grandmother wore that ring every day of her more than forty years of marriage and, though it broke my heart to change it at all, it was wearing pretty thin in places by the time it came to me. So when I took off for Saudi Arabia, I left the ring in London. Last week, nearly two full years after we first discussed the subject and four months after getting engaged officially, everything is finally arranged, geographically and otherwise, and the ring has found its final place on my happy little finger.

This ring was meant to make life easier, cheaper and more meaningful for everybody, and instead sucked up almost two full years of time and energy on three different continents.

I’ve dedicated quite a lot of thought over the past months to what, exactly, makes the wedding-planning process so excruciating. With the help of Meg’s book and its wisdom, I have narrowed it down to two major factors. Continue reading Elisabeth: Going The (Intercultural, International, Wedding Planning) Distance

Posted in: Planning: Journeys, The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 57 Comments »

Apr 2012

Wedding Redux: Facing Fears as a Second Time Bride

This week, we wanted to explore different perspectives on getting married. Yesterday, we discussed becoming a stepparent at a young age, and then we talked about finding out right after the wedding that you were having a baby (surprise!). So today, Dorie is here talking about the fears of being a second-time bride and the bravery it takes to jump into marriage, every single time.

I just hauled a bag full of marriage improvement, couple-oriented, self-help books in for trade credit at my local used bookstore.

That line makes me sound bitter, perhaps, or hopeless. One might think that I just now decided that my marriage was over, that I have just decided to file for divorce. The reality is, though, I have been divorced since 2007. Instead of dumping those books in preparation for a divorce, I am getting rid of the marriage advice books in preparation for my upcoming wedding.

My fiancé and I were the product of a whirlwind romance, courtesy of, well serendipity. A native East-Coaster, R. was in Arizona doing some consulting, and he had just reconnected with his old college roommate who lived in Phoenix. Said former roommate and I knew each other through volunteer work. One day R.’s former roommate said to me, “I’d like to introduce you to somebody. He’s here on a consulting gig and a little bored. I thought maybe you would want to play tour-guide.” We met, hit it off, I played tour guide, and then those outings became dates. I really liked him, but I wasn’t thinking (too much) about our future.

We had known each other for only about five months when my now-fiancé asked me, “When do you think we should maybe talk about talking about getting married?” Despite all the hedging in that question, I nearly fell off the sofa, thinking, “What? Get married? Talk about getting married? He’s crazy! What never-married, not quite 50-year-old says things like that after knowing somebody for five months?" Yet, instead of saying what I thought, I mumbled something about the fact that I would have to move and would not be able to find a job. Lack of job security, however, was not the real reason I did not want to talk about (talking about) getting married. The real reason was that, simply, I was afraid. I had done this once before, and even though our relationship felt right in ways the other one did not, I felt worried and fretful: What if it doesn’t work the second time around? Continue reading Wedding Redux: Facing Fears as a Second Time Bride

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, Wedding Undergraduates | 23 Comments »

Apr 2012

The Flower Girl

When A. sent me this post, she told me that as a younger woman becoming a stepmother by marriage, she felt a bit alone. She said, "In reading around the wedding blogosphere, I've found it difficult to locate stories of women like myself: youngish, first-time brides without children of their own who are stepping into insta-families. A lot of stepmom stories seem to be geared toward women who are entering their second marriage, or who have biological children of their own. I admit that I've been feeling like the lone ranger." And I realized this is the kind of story we really need to be telling each other. We need to be talking about this not just because none of us should have to feel alone (and I know many of you are, or are becoming, stepparents). But also because A.'s story is about bravery. It's about stepping into all the complications of loving another person. It's about being scared, but not letting that stop you. And in the end, it's what love is.

The first thing we knew about our wedding planning was that we definitely had a flower girl.

She's seven years old. She loves chapter books, ballet, and swimming. She's bright, funny, and articulate, and she has her own sense of style, favoring brightly patterned tights and twirling skirts. She is my future stepdaughter, which means I'm a future stepmother. Which means... well, it means that my baby family is going to have to become a grown-up, fully-functional one in a hurry.

There was never much doubt in my mind that I wanted to be with my partner, B. I loved him from very early on. As our relationship marched forward, I became increasingly certain that I wanted to be with him for the long haul.

But a ready-made family had never figured into my vision of the future. I wasn't afraid enough of the concept to run away right off the bat, but I worried. I stayed up at night worrying about whether I could handle being a stepparent and all that I imagined that it entailed—and if I knew that I couldn't, whether I had any business being with the man I loved. I wailed, I gnashed my teeth, and I sobbed in my car in parking lots across town because I was just so terrified that I might be morally obligated to walk away from him if I knew that I couldn't handle eventual stepparenthood. Even ages before we were talking marriage, I knew it was an issue I had to deal with.

The logistics of dating a single dad were doable. His daughter was two when I met her, after B. and I had dated a few months and said “I love you” to each other. There were bedtimes to observe, custody schedules to juggle (he has her every other day) and occasional toddler tantrums to wait out. As a then-27-year-old who had never changed a diaper or rocked a baby in her life, I was perfectly happy with the fact that he never asked me to be a parent to her. Just hanging out together now and then was fine by me.

Besides, she had a mom already, who was doing a fine job of being a mom.

The things that so often bother the partners of single parents—the tough scheduling, the feeling of somehow coming second to a child—those things didn't bother me. I never saw myself as in competition with her, because...well, because she was a child and I was a partner and those things are very different. What wasn't fine, for me, was that I was basically terrified of a small, blonde moppet of a human being. My natural reticence around children was amplified by the fact that I believed getting too close to her was emotionally dangerous for both of us. What if my relationship with B. didn't work out? What if I turned out to be attached to her more than him? What if... well, what if I ended up loving her? Scary stuff. I know women are supposed to be all “Yay! Children!” but I'm just not. The scariest thing I could think of would be to develop a close relationship with my boyfriend's daughter. Continue reading The Flower Girl

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 95 Comments »

Mar 2012

A Few Hours of Happy Amid the Sadness

One of the things that's proven to be profoundly important about the APW community over the last four years—profoundly and rather unexpectedly important, given where we started—is the ability of this community to share wedding stories that are not being told elsewhere. For those of you planning a wedding while grappling with grief, it's important to know that you're not alone. And for the rest of us, it's important to remind ourselves why a wedding matters in the first place and what a life together means. So today I'm honored to introduce Sara, telling a story that's hard to tell.

After more than a year of planning, and with only a month to go before the big day, I had managed to remain pretty calm about the wedding planning process. We followed some sage APW advice early on and decided to spend our money and efforts on the things that matter most to us. We wanted a secular ceremony that was intimate and personal, so we decided to get married in our living room, surrounded by a small group of our closest family and friends, and we asked my brother to serve as our unofficial officiant (Note: if you live in PA or another state that provides self-uniting marriage licenses, this is totally doable! And legal!). We wanted to celebrate with a great party with amazing food and booze, so we hired a kick-ass caterer and bartender. We didn’t hire any other vendors (I made all of the flower arrangements with my best friend, photos were taken by family and friends with polariods and disposable cameras, and lots of other DIT action was going on behind the scenes). All of which is to say that by focusing on the important things, and minimizing (and in some cases, eliminating entirely) the less important things, I had been able to focus and enjoy the planning process with very little stress. I thought I had hit my Wedding Zen. And then, on February 24th, I had my first major wedding related meltdown.

On that fateful day, for no discernible reason, I suddenly freaked out and convinced myself that I had not ordered nearly enough food from the caterer. We needed to order enough to cover forty-three people, even though our final headcount was only thirty-three, and we needed to add a ham to the carved meat station. HAM! WE MUST HAVE HAM! AND ENOUGH FOOD TO FEED TEN ADDITIONAL, IMAGINARY GUESTS! HOW COULD I NOT HAVE REALIZED THIS SOONER! I spent a solid half hour that evening shouting such things at my partner, who I’m certain thought I had completely lost my damn mind, but instead he simply said “I think that if ordering more food will make you calm down, you should do it.”

And then, a few hours later, we found out that my brother is terminally ill. And suddenly, I didn’t give a f*ck about the ham anymore.

The news of my brother’s declining health was not entirely surprisingly. He was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, underwent grueling treatments and came through it, his cancer in remission. But a host of complications arose as a result of the cancer treatments he received, and now he is terminally ill. His doctors are considering alternative treatments options, all of which are quite scary and none of which provide a guarantee of long term survival. At this point, the doctors say he has about a year to live. Although my family was well aware of my brother’s serious health problems, none of us saw this coming, at least not yet.

I repeat: f*ck the ham. Continue reading A Few Hours of Happy Amid the Sadness

Posted in: The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 26 Comments »

Mar 2012

Zen: The Save-the-Date Saga

I hadn't read Meg's book when I first got engaged, but (spoiler) it has recommended steps for the newly-engaged person. As a lover of lists and inveterate box-ticker I would've been delighted by this, and I would've been even more pleased to know that I had Step One down.

The first thing to do is to brainstorm and to dream. Let yourself dream unrestricted by reality at first, because the heart has a way of guiding you in the right direction, even when the heart seems a little crazy. —From Chapter One

Because weddings do weird things to your brain, what I started dreaming about was… stationery.

My save the dates came to me in a flash of light, attended by angels singing. A picture of me and my fiancé astride our Chinese zodiac animals—the tiger and the ox respectively—leaping in mid-air and high-fiving!

I had it all figured out. I'd get my ridiculously talented artist cousin to draw my vision and email it to me, I'd print it off on a bunch of postcards, send it to all my friends, and sit back and bask in the glow of knowing I had the cutest save the dates (wo)man had ever seen.

This, of course, is not the way any wedding-related dream goes. Reality took the form of my mother—and reality, as always, was stranger than you think.

"It's real cute!" said my mother via text message. But she hinted darkly at "some implications from some traditional old sayings."

My parents' concern turned out to be the prominence of our zodiac animals. "The tiger eats the ox so maybe people will joke you will bully Peter," said my mom.

"But if I bully Peter it's because I'm just that kind of person, not because I'm a Tiger. I'll bully him if I'm a Rabbit also."

Strangely my mother did not seem to find this reassuring. Continue reading Zen: The Save-the-Date Saga

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Planning: Journeys, Wedding Undergraduates | 48 Comments »